


Clearer Now

by Ezlebe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Flashbacks, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 21:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13221288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: “Well,” Hux snaps, turning on his heel when the silence becomes too much to bear.Ren stares back with oddly wide-eyes, sopping hair plastered to his face. “Well?”“Where are the jokes?” Hux says, lifting his chin, feeling a tight frown settling across his lips. “My match the Jedi master, hero of the Clone Wars, Bane of Lord Vader, et cetera.”Ren opens his mouth, seemingly ready to fulfill expectation, then closes it with an exhale. He shrugs stiffly, rolling up the jumper hem in his hands and shoving it over his head in one swift movement.





	Clearer Now

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [Kylux Anthology](https://kylux-anthology.tumblr.com/) like literally eight months ago, so it's probably far different than like my current or even past stuff - I found some expected difficulty in writing within the bounds of a word limit. The theme was _Spectrum_ , and I chose to assign that to various placements and textures of soulmarks. 
> 
> The anthology summary for this was: _Hux is under duress, on the run, and wearing the name of one of the oldest enemies of the Empire on the back of his neck. None of these are strictly related._.

A sharp inhale breaks the relative quiet of the room, then a low voice that seems mostly air. “ _Obi-Wan_?”

Hux swallows hard and continues pulling on donated clothes, shoving the buttons into place and straightening his sleeves. He reaches down and grabs the oversized jacket, pulling it over his shoulders and making sure to pop the collar against his neck. He is half-surprised Ren could even read it, as scrawling and unintelligible the hand is that wrote the hellish script on his nape.

“Well,” Hux snaps, turning on his heel when the silence becomes too much to bear.

Ren stares back with oddly wide-eyes, sopping hair plastered to his face. “Well?”

“Where are the jokes?” Hux says, lifting his chin, feeling a tight frown settling across his lips. “My match the Jedi master, hero of the Clone Wars, Bane of Lord Vader, et cetera.”

Ren opens his mouth, seemingly ready to fulfill expectation, then closes it with an exhale. He shrugs stiffly, rolling up the jumper hem in his hands and shoving it over his head in one swift movement.

Hux gives into an impulse to scoff at the unexpected tact. "How mature.”

“It's an odd place for a mark,” Ren says, his eyes darting up and back down with a curl at his lips. He seems preoccupied suddenly, chewing at nothing; then again, it might have been commonplace under the helmet.

“Maybe to _you_ ,” Hux mutters, only to regret it an instant later. He doesn’t need Ren getting ideas that he's sentimental, especially when the affection for it is due to little more than instinct. “I assume yours is somewhere banal like an inner thigh."

“Almost,” Ren confirms, which is a surprise, then abruptly shifts on his toes and slides a hand high on his thigh, just under his left buttock – even more of a surprise. He generally isn't such a forthcoming creature.

“Ah,” Hux intones, dragging his attention upward and back to Ren’s face, giving a shallow swallow at the expectant look in his eyes. “Possessive, then, if we’re going by the literature.”

“Maybe,” Ren says, gaze falling and skittering between the six walls around them, before settling back on Hux's face. He inhales slowly, as if realizing some course of action. “He is about most things.”

Hux stares for moment, entirely taken aback, then suffers a sudden strike of disappointment, long and echoing, which digs painfully into his chest. He looks down and begins folding damp clothes, wondering at this ugly jealousy deep behind his breastbone. It shouldn't be a surprise that Ren has met his match, he's over thirty, but Hux had thought… Well, he'd always thought that Ren was alone. It had made it feel as if Hux wasn't the only independent left on the ship.

“Yours?”

“Unknown,” Hux says, keeping his eyes down as he finishes tidying and shoves the neat stack into a musty corner.

He'd looked, of course, to see if there were any unfortunately named figures among those he might meet, but of course there wasn't, not even in the older troopers. It would've been nice to have a trooper, actually, with a steady line of designation. Even some ghastly non-regulation nickname would still be better than Obi-Wan. The mere reputation of the name was signifier enough how slim the chances were of Hux ever meeting them, and even slimmer of them being First Order. He can recall every accusation of turncoat he's received since he was a boy, from his father to his dorm-mates to his incompetent superior officers, and he's long-dreaded those silenced voices proving right.

At this point, it's downright guaranteed.

“I meant the literature," Ren says, exhaling with an odd cough and pulling Hux’s focus back to the present. “What does it say about the neck?”

Hux shrugs tightly, reaching out and pressing his damp fingers against the display screen near the door, trying to get the attention of the hosts. He thinks he might hear some shuffling on the other side, but it's likely just wishful thoughts.

“Also possessive?” Ren continues, his voice ringing with an unidentifiable, if strident, note of emotion as he pushes for an answer. “Strong?”

“The front of the neck is a sign of a controlling mate,” Hux says, reciting some nonsense he recalls from one or another ill-advised holonet venture. “The nape, more supportive. In some systems, erotic.”

“Erotic,” Ren repeats, bizarrely thoughtful. “Like mine.”

“Hardly,” Hux mutters, crossing his arms and trying to rub some warmth into them; he has an urge to touch at the back of his neck, but ignores it. “Marks are always on thighs or hips. It's cliché.”

* * *

 

_“I have orders,” Ren announces, pausing at the head of Hux’s desk._

_“Alright,” Hux says, absently making a mental note to check Ren off for reporting so promptly, and perhaps making a second one of what a shock it is to receive. He flicks to the next screen on his data pad, reading a few lines in Andewn’s report, then realizes he hasn’t heard the conventional stomp of weighted boots. “Well? Go off and fulfill them.”_

_Ren is silent for a long few moments, unmoving, then takes an audible breath. “I would prefer not to. Fulfill them.”_

_Hux slowly looks up from his data pad, raising an eyebrow and ignoring a sinking in his stomach. “Why?”_

_“The weapon is near completion.” Ren reaches up and depressurizes his helm without warning, lifting it off in a single smooth motion. He doesn’t even glance down as he slams it down to the desk, instead turning against the broken rays of Starkiller’s sun. “Testing has been successful, nothing left than need for documentation. The troopers are loyal from infant to adult; the program streamlined to a minimal fault.”_

_Hux stares at the crooked profile of Ren’s bare face, swallowing slow and feeling the muscles contract in his throat. His ribs seem to clench with each next breath, tightening and threatening to collapse his lungs._

_Ren finally looks down, gaze capturing Hux’s like a laser snare. “I have orders. You don't want me to fulfill them.”_

_“You have no other options,” Hux says, knowing the truth of it with little real thought. He has managed to delude himself with illusions of greatness since nearly the beginning, but… high command has a history of disappearing, easing the way for the next pawn to take their place._

_Ren shakes his head and leans down, hands flattening against the surface of the desk. “I do.”_

* * *

 

“Are you going to contact your match?” Hux asks, the mounting silence far too tense only moments after the innkeeper delivers their food. “After we’re in better circumstances, of course.”

Ren is all that remains of the past, after all, so Hux may well do to endear himself into not ending up on the wrong end of a saber. It's especially important at a table such as this, their knees practically entwined underneath for how small a space they share between them.

“No,” Ren mutters, glancing up and then back down, shifting in his seat with a worrying creak of strained folding joints. “They wouldn't – well, they would, but not for… this. I was under the impression for many years it was disparity. I haven't confronted them.”

Hux frowns, quirking a brow down at his plate. Disparity is exceedingly rare, but it's hardly a surprise that Ren thinks himself just that singular. It's the way he says ‘confronted’ that is questionable, like he expects to have a fight from his _match_ ; it’s not like his mark is over the skin of his knuckles.

"However, it has become. Clearer now,” Ren says, an expression crossing his face that speaks of resolve. “I recently discovered that the Force simply used a name so obscure I had forgotten it was mine.”

“Are you sure it's the right fellow?” Hux asks, pitching his voice into a rather comfortable patronizing tenor. The idea Ren might have latched onto some poor, coincidentally-named soul seems entirely too plausible.

“I am now,” Ren says, staring down at his skewered meat and veg. He carefully slides off the purple portion with his fingers, dropping it to the plate with a scowl.

"Yet you've kept to yourself this entire time,” Hux says, disbelieving despite the surety from across the small table. “Even now you've found out.”

Ren glances up quickly, almost furtive, “Mostly.”

"Your regard for this man must certainly be overwhelming,” Hux says, looking back to his own meal and carefully cutting at the meaty loaf with the sharp edge of his fork. He should stop talking, he doesn't want to hear more about Ren’s status as matched, yet his mouth seems on a different set of circuits. “You're hardly subtle when it comes to something you think is yours. I would know.”

“In theory,” Ren says, probably just to be contrary.

“In _practice_ ,” Hux insists, keeping his tone clipped. He resists the childish urge to glance to the shuttle outside, wingtips just visible from the window, which was once a point of loud contention. He concerns himself with shoveling a few measures of unfamiliar food onto his fork, tasting it hesitantly and finding it not completely unpalatable. He recognizes the texture of fresh meat, even a starchy root vegetable, but years of rations have left him unable to take any more than a few bites without feeling sick.

“You've never met an Obi-Wan?”

Hux pulls away from the uncertain contemplation of his plate, trying not to feel relieved. He looks up with his iciest glare – predictably, it only seems to encourage the fool across the table.

“Ever?” Ren prompts, his eyes markedly wide and bright. After four years, it seems the way to an amicable relationship has been found: personal gossip. A shame it's come too late to be any use. “Are you certain? They might be using a… pseudonym. Or two.”

“I've been doing backgrounds on everyone I've met since it manifested,” Hux says, halting a derisive scoff at the back of his throat. He takes a sip of his aquamarine drink, sugary and vaguely alcoholic. “Aside for you, obviously.”

Ren responds with a slow blink, something odd shifting in his eyes that seems to make him glance down. The emotion looks to physically spread across his shoulders and down his arms, ending with a twitching flex of his fingers.

“Everyone in the Galaxy knows your name,” Hux adds, discomfort forcing out the words. He's not certain, but he thinks that might be what Ren looks like when _hurt_ , and it's… Well, it's not a particularly fetching image.

Ren hums, low and petulant like he'd forgotten the obvious, and tension fades from his shoulders as he reaches for another kabob. He begins removing the purple vegetables from this skewer as well, expression pinched and annoyed.

“Not that it's any of your concern,” Hux starts, prematurely cutting a few too many strips of meat and letting them fall behind his knife, “But I – ”

Ren glances back up, his look quickly intensifying into a stare.

“I don't want to meet them much, anyway,” Hux finishes, deciding it sounds infinitely better than the real truth of the matter. After all, he is a rather high-profile figure at this point, infamous some might say, and his name is neither a secret nor at all common. He’s nearing thirty-four for hell’s sake, and statistically… he must have met them at least once, and if they weren't part of the First Order, then he met them on some less savory venture.

It's all too likely they simply want nothing to do with him, so he would do well to return the sentiment. If he's learned one thing at this point, it's when to cut his losses, no matter how deep the pain splits his chest.

“Oh,” Ren intones, dropping his eyes. His brow furrows, tight, and then abruptly relaxes, making his expression look oddly reluctant.

“Besides, I think recent events have made quite clear I'm not meant for that sort of _serendipity_ ,” Hux says tightly, dropping his fork to the plate with a loud clink. He isn't even hungry; he hasn't been hungry in over eighty hours, since the moment Ren convinced him to believe in this suicidal venture.

He should have just let it happen, taken his fate with likely more dignity than his predecessors. 

“You might be surprised,” Ren says, an unfamiliar note in his voice, if tinged with that oft-dark humor.

“I rarely am,” Hux murmurs, feeling jilted by the sudden levity, hurt bristling under his skin in rare, honest form.

“The Jedi used to brand it off the padawans in ritual,” Ren says, changing the subject with an awkward curl at his mouth. He leans over the small table with little warning, his overlarge hand curling wide and warm across Hux's nape before disappearing in the next instant. “No attachments.”

“Barbaric,” Hux says, swallowing hard and pretending not to notice the rasp of his voice nor the heat lingering on his neck. He's not sure how to deal with the surprise appearance of this _stranger_ , tactile and imparting old Jedi customs, like yesterday he wouldn't have eviscerated someone for daring to raise the subject of his past. “Wouldn't do that to a trooper.”

“Legend says that it reformed in other places once the Jedi gave into the call of the Dark,” Ren continues, returning to his seat with a low sigh and a frown. “A signal of the freedom they regained.”

Hux tries to will himself to stay quiet, play at disinterested, yet he finds himself catching Ren’s eyes and narrowing his own. “As a different name?”

Ren is silent for a few moments, an odd crumpling of his expression betraying some inner thought. “Is that what you want?”

“…It would make little difference,” Hux says, after the quiet becomes near-stifling. He looks away again from Ren’s laser of a stare, curling lips around his teeth and resigning to his own reluctant fate. His father often said he would only disappoint his match, so it was lucky they were a Republic lapdog; a different name would hardly change that now. “What of you? I can only imagine how _frustrating_ your disparity must have been.”

Ren answers with such a furious a shake of his head that it causes a soft recoil of his curls. His eyes dart around his own hands on the table, mouth twisting to the side, until he looks up with a slow inhale and a furrowed brow. “He… He fits into some of the many places within myself that are empty, as much as it angers me. It was why I assumed disparity, but now… it is only a matter of time until he appreciates the same.”

“Ah,” Hux intones, realizing the meaning of the words with a minor spasm of his throat, choking him from saying more.

It explains why Ren had been so eager to abscond from the First Order with the sparest of warning. He must have left his match behind when he first betrayed the Republic, and is returning to them now with hopes to beg back favor after an erroneous assumption of disparity. Hux’s life has likely only been spared as little more than a lucky side effect of changing perspective, a misguided show of evidence that Ren isn’t so bloodthirsty as his reputation would have it.

Hux wonders if he’ll get the opportunity to shatter the illusion.

“I would do anything for him,” Ren continues, his voice sinking into a bizarrely stern tone, bearing a severity not unlike how he speaks of the Force. “ _Anything_.”

Hux nods slowly, recognizing better this sudden tightness of breath at the center of his chest, and pushes up from his seat, metal feet skidding across the stone floor. He gestures stiffly to the door, careful not to look Ren in the face. “I’ll be taking a walk.”

“Oh,” Ren says, “I’ll get – ”

“No,” Hux interrupts, taking the ratty second-hand jacket from the back of his chair and pulling it over his shoulders, then reaching for his blaster. It fits well within the waistband.

Ren gives a haughty scoff. “Don't be – ”

The door closes with a mechanical thunk before Hux can hear any more of the pretext, leaving him alone in the hall, silent but for a soft breeze through an open window. He inhales slowly and blinks a few times to clear his eyes, concentrating on the steps up the stairs leading to the roof patio. 

The smells of rain and soot greet Hux as the door swings open, but the sky is clear, featuring an unfamiliar array of constellations emerging against the falling horizon. In theory, if he looks just so in the fourth quadrant, he might even see Starkiller’s sun, as much as he knows it's wishful.

He sinks down onto a stray piece of steel that might have once been a bench, exhaling as he looks to the street below and catching residents scurrying about on errands. It is an odd sensation not to have anything of import looming over him – discounting the threat of death, but that’s hardly unusual.

He isn’t sure what he’ll do once he’s out on his own; he has never had the agency to choose his own purpose. He had irrationally assumed that Ren’s willingness to spare him had meant he might be around, but the revelation of his match has put an end to that half-formed future. Hux doesn't even know why he took it that way - they hardly get on, though Ren might be what he would grudgingly call better company than most.

The door gives a loud creak and Hux looks over, half expectant, only to watch as a Togruta and a Zeltron stumble out onto the patio next to him. He tries not to feel disappointed, tilting his head at the Togruta’s short nod of greeting, and looks away when they both topple down onto a bench just near him.

They both smell of alcohol and tabacc, likely come from the bar downstairs, and he attempts to settle back into his own dour mind and ignore the over-enthusiastic tittering only a few meters from his side. He glances over reflexively at a particularly high-pitched noise, then just as quickly looks away; he doesn't know a lot of this planet, but he's fairly certain it has to have _some_ standard of public decency.

His damnable curiosity has him peeking again when an indiscernible murmuring starts up, and he grimaces at the sight of almost-bared breasts and an abandoned decorum. It seems directed at a mark, of course, and the Togruta repeats the phrase again, pressing a smirk under the Zeltron’s hem with an audible hum. The Togruta’s likely complementary mark is visible now, just over the wrist curling across an arching back. A covetous and amorous match then, and Hux is stuck next to them until he can swallow his pride.

He forces his attention forward again, leaning back in his bench and ignoring the searing resentment behind his sternum. It’s foolish instinct more than logic, a complete waste of his concern, and something he could have at least pretended apathy about before this morning. If only Ren could have simply mocked him as everyone else has, but no – he had to go on and on about his own match.

Hux hopes they’ve forgotten Ren for all their supposed possessiveness; he hopes they’re so content in their own disparate match that they reject him, forcing him to crawl back –

He inhales sharply and shoves the thought from his mind, willing himself not to care. He can remember reading that the bitterness naturally got worse as age wore on independent, but those sources weren’t particularly reliable. It's more likely that without work or responsibility, his mind has seen fit to revert into pubescent obsession.

In shameful truth, he was once the sort of stupid child who would study everything from cheap holomags to unrealistic fiction, pretending for a few short moments at a time that he could feel a hand on the back of his neck, a whisper in his ear, telling him he was _enough_ , that he’d done _enough_. All he had wanted then, mocked for every failure while his triumphs were forgotten, was for someone to look and actually _see_ him.

The only thing he can imagine now is the warmth of Ren’s overlarge hand, his rudeness replacing fantasy, and knows it’s likely the closest he will ever get to the true sensation.

A loud clatter breaks the uncomfortable tension of the deck, a door creaking open to reveal a moron with a scarf curled over his face. Ren is hunched forward as he creeps to Hux with an unsubtle stare leftward, and Hux feels an insane urge to _apologize_ for him to the ostensibly unaware pair halfway to intercourse.

Ren keeps silent for a few long moments, then recoils into himself at a particularly breathy moan. His voice, when he manages to speak, is no more than an uncomfortable whisper, “Don’t they know we’re here?”

“I don’t believe they care,” Hux answers, willing Ren to pretend, as he has, that they aren’t there at all.

“Drunk,” Ren says, peeking again over a shoulder almost as if he thinks himself sly. His head tilts, eyes momentarily tightening, “Long-matched.”

Hux feels a disgusted sneer curling at his lips. They’re likely none the wiser to lost privacy – too wrapped up in each other. “The Togruta is literally shackled at the wrist.”

Ren hums low, tucking himself in far too close to Hux's side. “Your knowledge of marks is fascinating.”

“It's no more legitimate than Coruscanti astrology.” Hux says, forcing a huff from his throat and rolling his eyes to the street below. It seems this odd, tactile Ren will be sticking around; if only Hux could ignore how easily it sets a timid heat at the back of his neck. “The mere mention should offend your Force.”

Ren is quiet for a long moment, then shrugs so the length of his arm presses against Hux. “But it _is_ a study of it.”

“Hardly,” Hux mutters, knowing his cheeks are flushing from embarrassment at being called out so thoroughly on his childish musings. “Never mind it. We both have bigger concerns.”

Ren seems to heed the order for almost an entire minute, watching traffic at Hux's side, only to stand with a growling breath. He paces twice lengthwise in front of the bench, then straightens and turns, looming. “You cannot be this… this _dense_.”

Hux stares, narrowing his eyes. “Excuse me?”

* * *

 

_“Armitage,” Ren says, his voice a startling bark in the fallen silence, almost argumentative despite the already settled issues of Upsilon parking and trooper deployments. “That is your signature, then – your name?”_

_“I should think that obvious,” Hux says, looking up and across the desk with a roll of his eyes; Ren is folded into the small chair, just as he has been for the past hour, only now his previous apathetic posture is downright anxious. Hux narrows his eyes, looking back down to his datapad before he might be mistaken for concerned. “And you’d do well to continue addressing me as General.”_

_Ren is silent for a few moments, until he abruptly stands. “Do you know mine, then?”_

_Hux follows Ren with his eyes as he stalks to his side of the desk. “Your…?”_

_“My signature,” Ren snarls, snatching up Hux’s pen without warning and scrawling out a short, strictly forbidden name across the bottom of the document. “Do you… do you not see? Look at it!”_

_Hux reads again the messy jumble of letters, swallowing thickly, and realizes he has no idea the answer Ren expects. He chooses silence as compromise, a slight raise of his brow, wary of setting off anything more violent._

_Ren responds with a strange noise, shoulders hunching inward, and drops the pen back to the desk with a clatter. He backs up, two steps, then four, until he’s in front of Hux’s security door. He gives an angry scoff now, gesturing to it with an aggravated sweep. “I need – I must meditate. Open it. Your insufferable behavior has tried enough of my patience.”_

_Hux blinks at the vehemence bleeding through the modulator, the growling, heaving breath that follows it, and glances down to find his own hand trembling slightly just over the vandalized document. He clumsily shifts his grip and reaches out, tapping at the locks to release the mags before the door can be wrenched from its jamb._

_Ren must have been trying out some new act, lulling Hux into a false sense of camaraderie and even succeeding up to a point; it had been particularly good. It hadn't felt like a lie at all._

* * *

 

Hux stares at the pale expanse of muscled thigh, but all notions of admiration are superseded by the dark, familiarly printed _Armitage_ tucked up high against the crease of Ren’s ass. He swallows in shock, a flush bursting at the back of his ears like a burn, and finds himself utterly speechless for the first time in a long while.

"I remember I was surprised when it showed up,” Ren says, his voice downright pensive; daring to be thoughtful and calm for a situation that deserves far more choking disbelief. “Most signatures I saw then were in cursive.”

“Cursive is obsolete,” Hux says faintly, curling his fingers tight into his stolen jumper to keep from reaching out. He opens his mouth only to forget how to speak, his thoughts refusing to shift ahead, to move anywhere further than the characters of his own hand written on someone else’s body. He now reluctantly understands all those foolish stories: the surprise, the elation, the _panic_. He can see the top of an aurek disappearing into threadbare briefs, a grek curling along a sensitive inner thigh, every letter practically begging for him to touch.

“You were never going to say anything?”

“I tried to once, but…” Ren swallows, hands curling up at his sides, mouth folding into an uncomfortable grimace. “It truly seemed like disparity.”

Hux inhales slow and looks from Ren’s face to the dirty floor, feeling frustration and anger and _shame_ spool at the back of his mind. It seems Ren proposed this treasonous running, abandoning goals and risking his own life in the process, entirely for Hux, while ostensibly expecting little in return; he was the match Ren would do anything for, but said himself he wouldn’t call for help.

He looks back up and catches Ren’s expression, unfocused and turned slightly away, an expectation of being dismissed writ plain across his face. Why did he assume so little of Hux? “Coward.”

Ren practically bares his teeth in offense, recovering some from his sulk as he defensively tucks in his shoulders, making the muscle in his chest clench and retract. “You would never have believed me.”

“Not many I would believe named Obi-Wan _aside_ for you,” Hux admits, tipping his head in thought, glancing sideways at the datapad on the table. He can’t believe this has been in front of him the entire time; a Force user named after a Jedi – it was so _obvious._

“I’m not,” Ren snaps, “I don't use it. He's dead.”

Hux scoffs reflexively, only to pause an awkward moment, holding his tongue, then subsequently realizes that Ren believed them matched this _entire_ time and had still behaved like an utter ass. For years. “Dead? _Dead_?! Well then, you shouldn't have bothered to bring this up at all!”

Ren is snarling back in an instant, taking a step forward as if to literally put his foot down. “That is not what I meant.”

“Do you even _know_ what it’s been like to have you spitefully counter every word I speak for the last five years – to reject every attempt at geniality?” Hux says, gesturing quickly between them and neatly smacking Ren at the sternum, failing to get him to step back and forgetting to care in midst of his furor. “You seriously expect me to forgive that because my _name_ is on your _ass_?”

“My thigh,” Ren corrects, his voice fading some of temper, if eyes now ablaze with self-satisfaction. He lifts his chin, mouth setting into an infuriating smirk. “The edges are raised, as well, easy to read without looking – does that mean something, too?”

Hux grinds his teeth, the forced levity almost persuasive. “Your attempts at diversion are tarty at best.”

“Here,” Ren says, shifting another step closer until they're almost pressed together, boldly taking Hux's hand and directing it downward. “Feel it.”

Hux glances low, his neck flashing hot at the warm, solid muscle now underneath his fingers. It seems Ren wasn’t only playing at distraction; his mark is so standout that it would be noticed even in the most voidlike dark, each turn of letter stark and unambiguous. A new feeling settles heavy in Hux’s chest, breath thinning on exhale as heat spreads down and across every centimeter of his skin until it seems to sink into the mark at his fingers.

“A raised mark is…” Hux looks up to catch gleaming eyes, seeing dark, encompassing longing, and risks pride for honesty. “Jealous. _Greedy_.”

“You felt that when I said I had a match,” Ren says, his voice in a similar state to Hux’s – breathless thrill. “I… I took joy in it.”

Hux shifts forward on impulse, curling his fingertips harder into Ren’s thigh, and takes his lips with similar voracity. It’s clumsy but forceful, Ren meeting Hux with a hand sliding up to curl over his nape, mouth opening in a manner that makes it sloppy, almost overeager.

Kylo Ren isn’t quite the match Hux imagined, and nothing like he even _wanted_ – too big, too reckless, too argumentative – but that’s likely why it _is_ him. Ren’s sentimental description, filling those empty spaces, has become all too accurate despite Hux always looking the other way.


End file.
